Blitzkrieg Bop
by wedelia
Summary: The 2016-2017 Academic Decathlon topic is World War II, and Peter Parker happens to know one of the historical figures his team is studying. Actually, make that two.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a cross-post of a fic I wrote a couple years ago after Homecoming came out. I'm planning to post the final chapter in a few days, but if you're impatient, the whole thing is available on ao3 under the same username I have here.

* * *

"Hey, Mr. Stark?"

Tony looks up from his phone, sending Peter a curious glance from behind his expensive sunglasses. "Hmm?"

Peter fidgets. "You, uh, you know how to get in touch with Captain America, right? You have his phone number?"

Tony's eyes narrow. "Of course I do. What's this about, Peter?"

"Well…," says Peter. Then he laughs, nervous. "I kind of need a very specific favor."

* * *

Two days later, Peter's standing on a rooftop in Brooklyn across from _the Captain America_, which he's a bit starstruck about even though this technically isn't the first time they've met. But he keeps his cool, he thinks. He hopes. Peter took off his mask sometime between swinging onto the roof and spotting the _actual American hero standing next to him, holy shit_, so his awe is probably written all over his face.

Peter rocks back on his heels while Captain America — Steve Rogers — _Captain America! —_ mulls over his question.

"You want me to be a guest speaker at one of your decathlon practices?" Steve clarifies, after a silence that's just long enough to border on awkward. "_Me? _I think I'm technically still a fugitive."

Peter shrugs, says, "You seemed more approachable than the Winter Soldier."

Steve still looks dubious, but Peter can tell the captain's fighting a smile.

So he widens his eyes a little and tries to make himself look endearing, not above using dirty tactics to get what he wants. "Please?"

Steve sighs. Gives in. "All right."

_"Yes!" _Peter makes a high-pitched, excited noise that he would later describe as _totally dignified_, and not a squeal, stop smirking, Michelle — and says, gushing, "Thank you so much, Mr. Rogers! Thank you, thank you, thank you! You won't regret this."

Steve's arms remain firmly crossed across his chest, but there's a reluctant smile on his face when he says, "I'd better not."

* * *

The team's studying the Economics Guide when it happens. Mr. Harrington says, "Of course, the sale of war bonds increased dramatically after the debut of the Captain America USO tour —"

— and, as if on cue, a window at the back of the room shatters and a fully-uniformed supersoldier rolls in. Never let it be said that Steve Rogers doesn't know how to make a dramatic entrance.

"Sorry about that," Steve says after standing up from his crouch, brushing shards of glass off of himself nonchalantly and nodding in the direction of the window he came in through. Or, well, the frame of the window he came in through. Then he smiles winningly at the room at large and says, "I heard you guys are learning about World War II."

Flash drops his pencil. Peter hears him mutter "_Oh my God" _under his breath and has a moment of smug satisfaction.

Mr. Harrington's face is priceless. Peter's never seen anyone so stunned, except for maybe the old lady whose cat he'd swung out of traffic on patrol last month. (That was a long story.) Eventually Mr. H gathers himself enough to say, "I-it's an honor to meet you, Captain Rogers."

Steve grins. "Likewise."

Then he saunters over to the front of the room and leans against the edge of Mr. Harrington's desk, casually, as if breaking into classrooms is something he does every day. Considering what he does for a living, this probably seems tame to him.

"Peter recruited me to come speak to you today," says Steve, before winking in Peter's direction like they're sharing an inside joke.

_I'm going to owe him so many favors after this, _Peter thinks.

* * *

"I can't believe you know Captain America," Flash says, later, turning around in his desk to face Peter. "_Captain America. _How do _you _know Captain America?"

"And Spider-Man," Ned says, helpfully. There's a reason why he's Peter's best friend.

Flash looks ready to start tearing his hair out. "_How?" _

Peter says, "What can I say? I'm a man with many connections."

Michelle snorts.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter knocks on the door of Steve's apartment in Brooklyn, casting a nervous look over his shoulder as he does it. He gets the tingling feeling that he's being watched. He's sure it's no big deal, though.

Then the door swings open, and Steve (_Captain America! _a small voice inside Peter crows) flashes Peter a smile and ushers him inside. "Hey, Peter. Welcome to my humble abode."

"Hi, Mr. Rogers," Peter says. "Thanks for inviting me over! And for, you know, the whole thing you did at decathlon practice today. That was _awesome_. I owe you, like, a life debt."

He hesitates in the entryway, unsure where Steve wants him to sit and where he should drop his backpack. _I'm in Captain America's home, _Peter thinks, still a little awed that this is reality and not some kind of dream he's having.

Steve chuckles. "I wouldn't go that far."

"_Whoa_," Peter says, spotting something on the far side of the room. "Is that your shield? Do you mind if I…?" He makes a vague gesture at it.

"You don't exactly need my permission, do you?" says Steve.

_Berlin. Right, _Peter thinks, sheepish.

Then he thinks _This is so cool!, _because he, Peter Parker, is in _Captain America's apartment _holding _Captain America's shield_, and this time he isn't even obligated to pretend he's not fanboying over it, because he's pretty sure that particular cat is already very far out of the bag.

"This is the best day of my life," he tells Steve, earnest.

Steve looks amused. "Please let Tony know that I'm your favorite the next time you see him."

Peter glances from the shield on his arm to the backpack on the floor where he'd stuffed his super-high-tech, Stark-engineered Spider-Man suit and says, as a compromise, "You guys are at least tied."

Luckily Steve doesn't seem offended. Unluckily, he gets this competitive glint in his eye that Peter's not sure how to feel about and says, "We'll see."

* * *

The reason Peter's at Steve's house is that Steve offered to help him go over some of his Academic Decathlon notes, since Steve is, after all, an expert on this year's topic by virtue of having lived through it. (_Because he's _Captain America_, wow, _Peter thinks, with what he feels is a totally reasonable amount of enthusiasm.)

Steve's a good guy to study with. It doesn't take much time for him to understand Peter's meticulously color-coded flashcard system, and sometimes when he recognizes something covered by the cards he adds his own (occasionally snarky) commentary.

"Okay," Steve says, reading from one of the yellow flashcards. "Philipp Scheidemann."

"Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, resigned over the Treaty of Versailles." Peter leans back in his chair at the table they're sitting at and tucks his hands behind his head. This is easy.

"Italian member of the 'Big Four'."

"Vittorio Orlando."

Steve flips through some flashcards, looking for an orange or red one. Then he stills. Peter watches him curiously, still teetering in his tipped-back chair, wondering why Steve's smiling like that….

Steve prompts, "An elite combat unit eventually led by Dum Dum Dugan."

A voice close behind Peter says, "Howling Commandos."

Peter startles and falls backwards with a yelp after losing his balance on the chair. He would have hit the floor if the stranger the voice belongs to hadn't quickly reached out to steady him. Peter catches a glimpse of metal out of the corner of his eye.

"Easy there, pal," the stranger says, backing away a couple steps. When Peter swivels around to look at him, the stranger-who's-not-quite-a-stranger waves a metal hand, grins, and says, "Hi."

Peter stammers, "You — uh — I — what?"

Bucky Barnes looks over Peter's shoulder and says, "See, Steve? I can be approachable."

* * *

"It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Barnes, sir," Peter says, flustered, to the super-spy/war veteran who's now sitting next to Steve across the table from him.

"That's Sergeant Barnes to you, kid."

"Buck," Steve says, exasperated. "Be nice."

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he smiles when he tells Peter, "All right. Mr. Barnes is fine."

_!_, Peter thinks.


	3. Chapter 3

"Peter," Tony says, suspicious, "why did Rogers just send me a smug e-mail about how he took you out for ice cream last Thursday?"

Peter hums noncommittally into the phone that's tucked between his cheek and his shoulder and tries not to drop the load of laundry he's pulling out of the dryer. He says, "It's not my fault you guys are competing for my affection, Mr. Stark."

Tony sputters. "That's not what's—" he starts to protest, but then he seems to realize that that's _exactly _what's been happening. He sighs. "Sorry, Peter. I would try to excuse my actions by claiming that I think he's a bad influence on you, but even if that were true and Steve wasn't the kind of person who probably rescues kittens from burning buildings in his spare time, that would be a classic case of pot-kettle."

"I'm glad you're self-aware," Peter says, truthfully.

The person waiting in line to use the dryer at the laundromat is starting to give Peter the evil-eye, so he says, "Sorry, gotta go. Nice talking to you!"

* * *

"What is it about me, Ned?" Peter asks, waving a soggy cafeteria french fry through the air as he gestures at himself. "Is it my natural charisma? My rugged good looks?"

Ned laughs. And laughs. And laughs.

Peter starts to feel a bit vexed. "Stop laughing."

"I'm sorry," Ned says, sounding the opposite of that. "_Peter_. You sweet, oblivious baby penguin. You are probably the last person I would describe using the word 'rugged'."

"Your good looks are more puppyish," Michelle adds.

Peter takes an angry bite of his french fry. "I'm not puppyish," he grumbles.

Michelle looks at him, evaluating, then sends a commiserating glance Ned's way, like, _You see it too, right? _

Ned says, "You have to admit that she has a point, Peter. Like, didn't you say you used puppy eyes to talk Captain America into crashing our decathlon meeting?"

"Not in those words," Peter hedges.

"And didn't you mention that you asked Cap if you could play frisbee with his shield a couple days ago?" says Michelle. "That was a puppyish thing to do."

"That was fun," Peter says, defensive. It had been fun. He and Bucky hadn't even broken that much furniture. Relatively speaking.

"I'm sure," says Michelle, sounding the opposite of that.

Peter wishes more people in his life would say words with meanings that match the tone of voice they're said in.

Ned takes pity on him. "It's not that you're not one of the coolest guys I know, Peter," he says, "it's just that you also have this kind of goofy, lovable quality that makes people want to be nice to you."

Michelle nods. "Yeah. That."

Peter takes a contemplative bite of another one of his french fries. "I guess I can live with that," he says, grudgingly. "But what should I do about it? It's tearing the Avengers apart."

* * *

The weird thing is that Peter isn't even being melodramatic when he says that. Well, okay, maybe he's being _a little _melodramatic. 47 percent melodramatic, tops. But the other 53 percent is cold, hard truth.

Ever since Peter went over to Steve's (_Captain America's! _a quieting voice inside of him says) apartment following that decathlon practice — one might even go so far as to call it _The _Decathlon Practice™, considering the influence it had in rocketing both Peter's reputation and the custodian's blood pressure up to, like, stratospherically high levels — there's been an odd new tension between Steve and Tony.

In retrospect, the feeling Peter should have felt when Steve made that comment after hearing that he and Tony were tied for Peter's favorite was _foreboding. _

It's like both men suddenly get the idea that their lives are a game show and only one contestant can win the ultimate prize: Peter's esteem.

Steve tells Peter riveting anecdotes about what New York was like when he was growing up and takes him on supposedly educational "field trips" to places like Coney Island and the cozy, somehow-still-in-business ice cream parlor Steve frequented in the '40s. ("And that's the street where I picked up a door that had been ripped off of a taxi cab and used it as a shield," Steve narrates, gesturing expansively at said street while a wide-eyed Peter looks on.)

Tony, somewhat limited by his distance from NYC, retaliates by spending hours in R&D working on a series of totally awesome but often totally superfluous updates for Peter's Spider-Man suit.

At first Peter regards all of this with a kind of confused delight — because both of his idols are suddenly showering him with attention, _wow!_ —but after a few weeks he gets the feeling that things are starting to spiral out of hand.

* * *

A couple days after Karen gets upgraded to provide Peter with insightful weekly _Bachelorette _recaps, Steve and Tony's mostly innocuous jealous rivalry finally devolves into a shouting match. A shouting match that happens right in front of Peter, who's perched on a stool in Steve's favorite ice cream parlor and too busy staring, horrified, at the argument to notice that what's left of his mint chocolate chip ice cream is dripping out of its cone and onto his lap.

"Stop trying to steal my protégé!"

Steve clenches his jaw and counters, icy, "Stop enabling him to keep putting himself in danger."

Tony growls. Clenches his fists. There's a lot of mutual clenching action going on. He says, "You have no right to—"

And Peter, because he has to do _something_, can't just keep watching this escalate, yells, "_STOP! _Both of you!"

They turn in unison, shocked and suddenly a bit contrite-looking, to face him.

Peter bites his lip. He hates the way his voice quavers — and he probably looks like a kicked puppy or something, they'll think he's pathetic — when he says, "I don't want you to be angry at each other."

Tony's eyes go guilty. He reaches out a hand, says, softly, "Peter —"

And that's when Peter storms out.

The parlor doorbell chimes cheerfully as the door shuts behind him.

* * *

Peter knows intellectually why he's so upset, but that doesn't make things any less upsetting. It's distressing to watch the men he looks up to so much fight each other (again!) after they've only just made tentative strides to repair their strained relationship.

And Peter's the cause of the rift this time. It's his fault, after all, somehow.

_My puppyish charm is a dangerous weapon, _he thinks, mournful.

After leaving the ice cream parlor, Peter had fled to a nearby park and found an empty bench to sit at while he tries to regain his composure. It's not working very well.

He hears the rustle of fabric as someone sits down beside him. He recognizes the scent of the person's aftershave, knows immediately who it is.

Peter wipes at his eyes and says, stubbornly, "I'm not crying, Mr. Barnes. Okay? I'm not. It just rained on my face a little."

Bucky huffs. Then, slowly — with some trepidation, like he's in a war zone and crossing over into hostile territory — he lifts his nonmetal arm and places it around Peter's shoulders. He says, gruff, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Peter sniffs. "No."

Bucky accepts that.

They sit in silence for a long time.

Then, out of nowhere, Peter says, "It's you."

"What?"

"You're my favorite," Peter says, this time with growing conviction. He's always been the kind of person to say the words he means in the way they're meant to be said. "You - you're a really good guy, Mr. Barnes. Possibly even the best guy. I mean, you have to be pretty great to be willing to risk your superpowered best friend's wrath in order to play shield frisbee in his apartment with a dorky teenager you just met, I think."

Bucky snorts. "Don't sell yourself short, kid. It takes a certain kind of genius to come up with the idea of shield frisbee in the first place."

Peter grins. He feels warmer now than he did when he first sat down, not just due to the body heat radiating from Bucky's arm around his shoulders.

All of a sudden Peter has a realization. "Oh my God," he says. "You're _rugged. _Like, actually rugged. You're the first person I would list if someone asked me to describe a person using the word 'rugged'."

Bucky's nonplussed.

Peter glances over at the look on Bucky's face and laughs. He says, "When Mr. Stark and Mr. Rogers ask why I picked you as my favorite, we should tell them it's because of your rugged good looks."

Bucky smiles a lopsided but genuine smile. "I can't wait to see Steve's reaction to that. I bet it'll be even better than the rampage he went on after that frisbee incident."

"To be fair, the frisbee incident was mostly karma," Peter says, frank. "He doesn't really have a right to complain over broken windows."


	4. Chapter 4

Two grown men stand, abashed, in an ice cream parlor. The bell above the front door chimes brightly, totally at odds with the mood that's come over the room.

An elderly lady sitting at one of the nearly tables observes, "It looks like you boys've got yourselves into quite the mess."

When Steve and Tony turn to blink at her, she frowns and adds, "I hope you're planning to apologize to him for squabbling like that. Honestly! You two are worse than my grandchildren. Peter is a nice young man, and he deserves better."

Steve feels a flush creep up the back of his neck. "Sorry, ma'am."

"You're right," says Tony, uncharacteristically quiet.

He turns to the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan To Usurp His Role As Peter's Mentor (it's a bit of a mouthful, Tony acknowledges, but he thinks it has a better ring to it than SSMWAPTUHRAPM), extends a hand, and says, "Truce?"

"Truce."

They shake on it.

The woman gives them a pleased look and says, maybe a bit patronizing (matronizing?), "That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"

A frazzled-looking server comes out from behind the counter and says, "What have I told you about scolding my customers, Gran?"

"Maggie, dear, some people need to be scolded."

* * *

Tony thinks about what Steve said in the ice cream parlor about how he - Tony - has been putting Peter in danger, and feels guilty, because yeah. He has been. He can admit that, even though he's tried to justify it to himself by reasoning that the kid would be out using his powers anyway, so he might as well do it under adult supervision. (Tony's probably not the first adult that someone would pick to supervise a potted plant, let alone a superpowered human teenager, but still.)

Anyway, Tony gets Steve's point. And Steve gets Tony's point - namely, the point that Steve was behaving like a jerk. After a kind of tense conversation, they end up agreeing to work on a project to make it up to Peter… and, while they're doing that, to encourage Peter to take a mini-vacation —

"— and, you know, be a kid for a day. No super heroics allowed," Tony says.

Peter looks pretty upset for a teenager who's just been given a Stark-endorsed credit card and permission to use it to go wild at Coney Island. He frowns, says, "But Mr. Stark—"

"Peter," Steve says. His arms are crossed where he's standing next to Tony, who notes, gleefully, _he's using his Captain America voice. _

That voice is dangerously effective. Tony's heard it in action plenty of times throughout the years, and it's no less potent in the living room of the Parkers' apartment in Queens than it had been in the old Avengers Tower when Steve had given the team a long lecture about "not leaving half-empty coffee cups around the house. I mean really, guys, I don't think that's too much to ask."

Peter — predictably — wilts under the influence of the Captain America Voice. "Alright," he mumbles, looking resignedly down at the plastic square in his hands like it's an unwanted sweater a grandmother had knit for him and that he'd accepted out of politeness and not a _free credit card, come on, Peter. _Tony doesn't understand kids these days; he'd thought that Peter would be happier about the gift.

"Go have fun," Steve says — in his Steve Voice, not his Captain America one. This one is softer. Gentler. "You could take Ned or that Michelle girl and act like tourists for the day."

"Take the day off, Peter," adds Tony. "You've earned it."

* * *

Peter, Ned, and Michelle wander around NYC doing touristy stuff for a day.

Michelle — "call me MJ" — spots a jukebox in the corner of the diner that they have lunch in and borrows a few quarters from each of the boys to pay for it to play Tom Jones' _What's New Pussycat _twenty-one times.

They also go to a zoo, and one of the tigers reminds MJ of Peter.

"How so?" Peter asks, nonplussed.

MJ shrugs. "I don't know, man. I guess he has your eyes."

Bucky hovers protectively in the background the whole time to make sure that nothing bad happens, though the trio doesn't notice they're being followed until late in the afternoon. When they do, awkward introductions ensue.

"Uh - um - this is my friend Mr. Barnes," Peter says, gesturing at Bucky, who grins and waves. "You may know him as the Winter Soldier?"

Ned gets so flustered he nearly swoons.

* * *

After MJ and Ned have gone home, Peter and Bucky have a moment alone together. They somehow end up sitting at the same park bench where all of this began.

Bucky's arm doesn't find its way around Peter's shoulders this time. Instead they just sit next to each other and look out at the kids tossing Frisbees around on the grass. (Peter almost feels bad for them, because they'll never get to experience the exhilaration of Shield Frisbee, a sport reserved for people close enough to Steve — _Captain America! —_ to be trusted with the shield. His friends.)

Bucky clears his throat. He looks tense and awkward and supremely uncomfortable, which Peter interprets as a sign that he's about to say something that betrays the fact that he has the capacity to feel complex human emotions.

_The Winter Soldier's about to give me a Talk_, Peter realizes. He's torn between amusement and horror.

"Listen, bud," says Bucky. "I know you've got your heart set on being a hero. You don't like putting up with bullies—" A kind of soft look passes across Bucky's face. "—but that doesn't mean that you can't also have a life outside of all of the Spider-Man stuff, too. A good one. If you don't stop to appreciate it when you have the chance, you just might miss it."

Bucky means what he says. He's missed so much of his life already - decades of it - and he doesn't want to imagine anything remotely similar to what he went through happening to Peter. Not that anything like that _could _happen to Peter, but….

Well. A guy could worry, that's all.

"I'll be fine, Mr. Barnes," Peter says, lightly. "When we took career aptitude personality tests at school, I rated work/life balance as a five, importance-wise."

Then, at the unimpressed look Bucky gives him, he adds, "It was out of a scale of five, not ten."

Bucky reaches over to ruffle Peter's hair in a brotherly kind of way. "Sure, kid."

Peter pulls away from him and plays at acting huffy and indignant, but there's a shy kind of smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. _This is kind of nice_, he thinks. He's always secretly wanted a big brother figure.

There was a time in his life — before Ned and the decathlon team and the emergence of super awesome spider powers — when he was just a timid, bookish kid getting teased at school and he daydreamed about having some kind of protector swoop in and stand up for him. Ruffle his hair a little. Peter would never admit that out loud, though.

* * *

Meanwhile, Steve and Tony spend their time working together on a surprise. Tony designs a lighter, more frisbee-friendly shield, and Steve goes to the New Avengers Facility to prepare a Shield Frisbee court/field/area/place that won't get absolutely wrecked after one game.

(Speaking of absolute wrecks: Steve still hasn't fully forgiven Peter and Bucky for the state of devastation his apartment was in after their last round of Shield Frisbee. He's definitely not getting his security deposit back.)

Bucky brings Peter over at the end of the day to see the surprise, and his reaction is priceless. He immediately tackles both Steve and Tony into a hug and babbles into their shoulders about how, "This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, oh my gosh, thank you so much —"

Then he leans back and says that if they're seriously going to play Shield Frisbee, Steve may have to be a referee because he has an unfair advantage.

Tony sputters. "And I don't?"

"I do toss a shield around for a living," says Steve, wry.

Tony combats that with, "I made the thing! I know how to handle it better than anyone —"

Peter can't believe this. _"Guys." _

The men swap sheepish looks and say, nearly in unison, "Sorry, Peter."


End file.
